1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to embroidery systems, and in particular, to an angle finder tool for determining accurate embroidery angle measurements.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the current art, embroidery designs may be used as templates for embroidering a design onto fabric. Embroidery designs are employed by an embroidery/sewing machine to guide the machine's movement of the embroidery arm. The embroidery arm is directed to stitch the same pattern specified in the design.
An embroidery hoop is used to hold the stabilizer material and the fabric together, so that the design may be embroidered in the desired location and position on the underlying fabric. However, in some instances, the designs may be very large, and thus may not fit within a user's embroidery hoop. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates an embroidery design that does not fit within an available embroidery hoop. In this situation, the large design may be partitioned into multiple smaller design templates or sections 102–110. By partitioning sections of the large design, these smaller design templates may now fit within the user's embroidery hoop. Each of smaller design sections 102–110 may then be embroidered onto fabric 112 using the user's hoop.
However, alignment may be a problem when orienting a design template to the fabric, as well as to other design sections. Currently, if a user wants to align a design template to a desired position, the user must currently orient the design by essentially “eyeballing” the angle in which the design template should be placed against the fabric. Once the estimated orientation angle is determined, the user may then provide this estimated angle to the embroidery machine. The embroidery machine uses the user-provided angle to orient the embroidery to the design on the fabric. As the angle provided to the embroidery machine is a user-determined and estimated angle, the angle determined by a user may be inaccurate.
Thus, it would be advantageous to have a mechanism for finding a more accurate angle measurement for use in properly orienting the design onto the fabric during the embroidery process.